While stargazing app. 12:30CT early Monday morning, 10/4/2010, I sighted a low- flying aircraft that I could not identify.

I was in the back parking lot of an apartment complex in a south-western Birmingham suburb, near the top of the tallest hill in the area (which slopes northwards,) stargazing. No one was about and there was little to no air traffic at that time. It was a moonless night I was watching Taurus rise in the eastern sky. Out of the corner of my eye and towards my left field of vision, I noticed a large optical blur- like a wave effect- directly over the constellation Cassiopeia. A triangular or, perhaps, wide wedge shaped object seemed to materialize into existence at that point against the star field. The exact shape was difficult to ascertain, because my eyes were dazzled by an absolute matte blackness which seemed to cloak the thing and travel with it, and was profound and visually confounding; but I was able to discern that it was roughly triangular in shape.

Each of its three blunt or rounded corners was steadily illuminated, but these stripes of luminosity did not seem mechanical. Rather, they appeared dim and phosphorescent, of a sickly yellow-green hue, reminiscent of a weak glow-stick.

The object first appeared roughly 50- 60 degrees above the horizon, north-north-east, at an altitude of approximately 300- 400 feet, headed due south, skirted the Pleiades to the west, and passed almost over my head and behind the top of the hill. Its initial flight-path was slow and deliberate, like a helicopter or a glider. It could not have been either one of these vehicles, though, because it was absolutely silent and was traveling almost against the wind. It was much too slow for a prop plane or, especially, a jet. I will reiterate: the thing was silent as death. I estimate its diameter (point to point) to have been about 20- 30 feet. This first sighting lasted 8- 10 seconds.

It is perhaps irrelevant, but noteworthy, that within 10 seconds after this sighting I witnessed a brilliant white falling star in the east, very near on the horizon, directly behind what was the object’s flight- path.

About three minutes later, it (I assume it was the same object) proceeded back the way it came- this time at a much higher altitude and at an impossibly high speed. Had I not still been scrutinizing the sky, or had I even blinked, I would have missed it. This second time it was only recognizable as a distant black point of mass that blanked out the highest stars as it passed. Any object traveling at that speed should have (according to my understanding of Newtonian physics) produced a sonic boom, but it was, again, completely silent.

I will add a final, perhaps irrelevant, detail. For sake of a complete record I state here that I have never in my life felt such a prescient sense of dread and malevolence as I did while witnessing this object and after the fact. I soon departed the area. Since that time, I have been plagued with vicious nightmares and a disrupted sleeping pattern.